RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Divination
and Samoans use coconuts as the sieve and ring are used elsewhere. The employment of the lot is universal, and many nations have deities who preside over the cast.
In all the foregoing two characteristics appear: (1) Divination is in general under the patronage of religion. On the other hand, among many peoples there exists a distinction between legitimate and forbidden. Thus necromancy, or commerce with the dead, is often forbidden. (2) All methods are regarded by science as marked by a total inconsequence of data and results. Thus the lack of connection between the aspect of the planet Mars simply from its color and peace and war is sufficiently obvious, and is asserted to exist between all the methods of divination and the supposed results.
II. In the Bible: The Pentateuch legislates in all the codes against divination as practised among the surrounding peoples. The earliest code permits no sorceress in Israel (Ex. xxii. 18); the Deuteronomist (xviii. 10-11) forbids the people to suffer among them diviners, enchanters, necromancers, charmers, wizards, and those who have familiar spirits; the Levitical Code (Lev. xix. 31) forbids approach to those who have familiar spirits and to wizards. An indication earlier than the codes of prohibition of these means is found in I Sam. xxviii. 3. Yet the assumption in early Old Testament books is not that these means -were not successful, but that they were not permissible to Israel (e.g., the magicians of Egypt wrought duplicates of some of the signs and plagues, Ex. vii. 11, 22, viii. 7, 18, etc.). That diviners wrought actively in the surrounding nations is assumed (e.g., ut sup. and in I Sam. vi. 2, Ezek. xxi. 21, etc.), just as it is assumed in the Balaam passages and II Kings i. 2-3 that prophecy and the utterance of oracles existed outside Israel. The means legitimated in the Old Testament are: the dream, coming to Hebrew and to heathen alike, to Joseph and to Pharaoh and his servants (Gen. xx. 3,6, xxviii. 12 sqq., xxxi. 24, etc.; Judges vii. 13 sqq.; I Kings iii. 5 sqq.; Job xxxiii. 14-16; Dan. vii. sqq., and frequently); the lot (Josh. XV. sqq.; I Sam. xiv. 41; see Lots, Hebrew Use of); Urim and Thummim (q.v.); the ephod (q.v. ; I Sam. xxx. 7); and the living voice of the prophets. I Sam. xiv. 8 gives a case of logomancy. But there are indications that, as late as the time of the Judges, at least sacred trees were employed as oracles (Judges iv. 5, a very clear case in the light of ethnic usage; cf. verse 10). The dream is emphasized in the Old Testament, and the Pentateuchal narrator E has great fondness for it; the interpretation of the dream was a divine gift among the Hebrews as among many other nations (Gen. xli. 16, 38; Dan. ii. 28, 47, iv. 18). That in prophetic times in Israel there was either persistence of old methods or else adoption of them from the surrounding peoples is indicated by Hos. iv. 12, where rhabdomancy or xylomancy is referred to, and probably by several passages in Ezekiel. In the New Testament indications are given by the dream (Matt. i. 20, ii. 12 sqq., xxvii. 19; Acts x. 9-16, xi. 4-10) and the sacred lot (Acts i. 23-26).
III. Under Christianity: Divination entered the Christian Church from two sources: (1) with the membership which, recruited from paganism, brought with it practises customary under heathenism; (2) forms of decision sanctioned by the Scriptures tended to continue so far as they were available, together with those which non-canonical Judaism had practised. In particular, use of divination for the detection of criminals was especially persistent and continued till modern times. A strong tendency toward the continued use of divination is proved by the fact that church synods found it necessary to legislate against it. Thus canon Ixii. of the Synod of Elvira (305-306) requires that augurs who have become Christians renounce their calling before being admitted to membership in the Church; the Synod of Ancyra (314) condemns the manteuomenoi, " those who employ the mantic art," to five years' penance; the Fourth Synod of Carthage (398) excommunicates those who practise divination. The legislation of the period grows increasingly severe up to and including the Theodosian Code (ix. tit. 16, leg. 4). The Synod of Vannes denounces the use of the lot. But, as is frequently the case, the theory and the practise of the Church were at variance. To the common mind the fact that things were sacred (such as the wafer of the Eucharist, the emblem of the cross, and the Scriptures) seems to have justified their use in this manner, and this tendency spread upward from the common people to the clergy. The employment of the lot as based upon both Old Testament and New Testament usage and the application by Jews of the method of the Vergilianoe sortes to the Old Testament were carried over into the Christian Church as early as the fifth century. In parts of the West the lot entered into Christian codes (Ripuarian Code, xxxi. 5) and was sanctioned by early Irish synods {Excerptiones, ascribed to Egbert of York, ed. Thorpe, ii. 108). In France a dispute among the bishops of Poitiers, Arras, and Autun over the possession of the relics of St. Liguaire was decided at the altar by the lot in favor of Poitiers. The use of the Bible as in the Vergilianoe sortes to divine by was condemned by Augustine, though he regarded it as a less evil than consulting demons (Epist, Iv., ad Januarium, xxxvii., NPNF, 1st ser., i. 315). The synods in Gaul in the fifth century found it necessary to threaten the clergy with penalties for resort to divination; yet Gregory of Tours {Hist, reg. Franc, iv. 16) relates that in the presence of a concourse of bishops and priests at a celebration of the mass at Dijon the Gospels and Epistles were solemnly consulted regarding the fortunes of a son of Lothair I. Especially did the Ordeal (q.v.) as an appeal to God to indicate the guilty receive the practical sanction of the Church by the presence and often the participation of Church dignitaries and officials. The use of the Bible and the key (another form of bibliomancy) was particularly persistent. A key was loosely fastened to the Bible at Ps. 1. 18, the Bible made to revolve, while names of suspects were mentioned, and he at whose name the book fell was regarded as guilty. The latest case known of use of this method occurred at a
Divorce